May
15, 2000
AP
News
NASHVILLE, USA-- Men and women
experience the same level of sadness while watching a
tearjerker at the movies, but women are more likely to reach
for a box of tissues, according to a Vanderbilt University
psychologist.
Research
by Associate Professor of Psychology Ann Kring found that
women aren't more emotional than men, they are just more
expressive of their emotions. "It is incorrect to make a
blanket statement that women are more emotional than
men," Kring says. "It is correct to say that women
show their emotions more than men."
Kring's
findings on sex differences in emotion were published this
spring in the American Psychological Association's Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology. Emotion in this study was
measured by looking at expression, experience and
physiological changes among research subjects. Participants in
the study viewed clips from popular movies divided into five
categories - sad, happy, fear/disgust, anger and neutral.
Kring
conducted two studies on the differences in emotion among men
and women. In the first study, Kring examined the emotional
responses of men and women to determine whether women are
"more emotional" or whether they are just more
emotionally expressive. The second study examined family
expressiveness and gender role to determine whether these
characteristics can help to account for expressive differences
between men and women.
In
both studies, women were more facially expressive than men of
both positive and negative emotions. In addition, women
reported a more expressive disposition than men on a
self-report survey about expressivities
.
In
the area of gender role, male and female participants
endorsing a high number of characteristics traditionally
associated with both masculinity and femininity were more
facially expressive. They also reported having a more
expressive disposition than participants reporting only a high
number of either masculine or feminine characteristics.
"We
decided to see if maybe sex isn't the important variable in
emotional expressiveness since there are such predominant
stereotypes about sex and emotion. Maybe it's not sex that
contributes to these emotion differences, but something called
gender role," Kring says.
A
feminine gender role includes such characteristics as
nurturing, affectionate, warm, caring; a masculine gender role
includes attributes such as aggressive, assertive and
powerful. Men or women who have a high number of both feminine
and masculine characteristics characterize androgynous gender
roles.
In
both studies, research subjects - all university students -
were brought into a laboratory setting individually and told
that they were participating in a study of the psychology of
movies and what aspect of a movie draws people into the plot.
"We
didn't tell them that we were interested in exploring their
emotions explicitly because we didn't want the research
subjects to be acutely aware of that and then try to modify
their behavior," Kring says.
Research
subjects were secretly videotaped and electrodes were attached
to the palm of their non-dominant palm to measure skin
conductance activity, more simply known as palm sweating. All
participants were informed of the full nature of the study
following the sessions.
Kring's
research interests are in the areas of emotion and
psychopathology, particularly schizophrenia. She is teaching a
new course at Vanderbilt in spring 1999 titled
"Emotion." Kring received her bachelor's degree from
Ball State University and her master's and Ph.D. from the
State University of New York at Stony Brook.
